Rosa Campbell Praed

“ You did love that woman, Mr. Lendon. If some one had only loved me like that!"
"Surely there must be many"—he began.
"Oh many!" she interrupted. "You think I am a woman to inspire love. Well, I suppose I can count my lovers by the score—perhaps I can't count them at all—it would be a bore to try. But that's not the kind of love I mean—love that loves on through ingratitude and baseness, and reverences itself too much to make a mere plaything of what, after all, was only in its very nature created for the lower uses. ”

“ Why have I stipulated for a year in which to make up my mind—a year in which, though we are bound before the world, I am free as air to give myself to any one I like better? For the simple reason I have already told you I have never been in love. ”

“ He is willing to sacrifice himself on the altar of his infatuation: I may say that without vanity. His love isn't the kind of love I spoke of to you."
"You don't love him, then?" Lendon blurted.
"Love him! My friend—I may call you my friend, may I not?—it doesn't imply anything compromising—do you think I have lived twenty-five years in the world, and during nine of them have been in familiar acquaintance with some of the wittiest and best-bred and altogether most fascinating men in the world, to succumb now to the attractions of Sir Donald Urquhart?" ”

“ Think of the inner woman as still untouched with cynicism, still with the capacity for enthusiasm—for devotion. The outer experiences are only as garments to be worn or thrown aside. I am twenty-five, and I have had a rich wardrobe. Everything has happened to me except—Death and Love. ”

“ I'm not. I'm a pent volcano. I could love with all my heart and soul and strength, if—if the right man came along. But he has never come. My Prince Charming has never stepped within the enchanted palace to awake the sleeping princess by his kiss."
An odd little exclamation broke involuntarily from Lendon. It was half of pity, half of amusement. There did indeed seem something almost bordering on comedy in this picture Countess Adrian drew of herself as the innocent slumbering beauty who had never thrilled to passion. ”

“ I'm a woman who has got past conventionalities. That is part of my wretched position; one of the cruellest of the wrongs he has done me. He has given the world permission to insult me."
"No!" exclaimed Lendon, eagerly. "You do injustice to yourself, as well as to the world." ”

“ I have wandered all my life. I have never had a home. Sometimes," she added sadly, "I fancy that I never shall have one. Not that I regret my wanderings," she added hastily; "they have thrown me among strange people and have taught me some strange things, though I am not quite so learned in Eastern lore as Maddox Challis. Do you know, by the way, whether he has really started for Lebanon?"
Lendon answered in the negative.
"That man fascinates me," said the Countess. "He is the only person I have ever met who gives me the feeling that he could make me do what he pleased. ”

“ Oh, the twin soul theory is a hackneyed solution of the problem why some two people love each other, and some other two do not. My theory is that certain forces in oneself reach their climax, and at the same given time certain outside currents converge and bring about a convulsion, and then it is, when one's nature and one's surroundings are ripe, that love comes. ”

“ Lendon felt at a loss to reply; all he could say was, "You are very hard."
She laughed. "I knew you would make some banal remark. I hoped you would be more original. Of course I am hard; and of course, too, it is as I say: even Sir Donald Urquhart is obliged to confess it."
"Sir Donald, at any rate, proudly announced the probability of your bearing his name."
"He is too devoted. He thinks it advisable I should change one which is a subject of disagreeable notoriety. ”

“ I don't feel in the mood to ask favours."
"I assure you, Countess, whatever the favour may be, it is granted. For you to ask a favour from me is to confer one."
"We shall see. I will write. And now that you know your way to my sky parlour, I am always at home after five o'clock." ”

“ You see, Sir Donald is not a very young man, and so has less to lose. He has no one to please but himself, and so can't hurt anybody's feelings of consequence to him. Then he is an art-collector and dilettante, and has a reputation for eccentricity, so can do with impunity many things that in anybody else would set Mrs. Grundy rampant. Added to all this, he is a man about town of no very exalted moral standard. He has never in his life denied himself a thing he wanted ”

“ I suppose, without bad taste, I may assume that I am interesting; at any rate some misguided people have found me so. You were wrong, Mr. Lendon," she went on, without waiting for his reply. It was a peculiarity of Countess Adrian that she never allowed time for a reply that must necessarily be a compliment. "Wrong, in your interpretation of what I said about my husband. There was no trust betrayed, in one sense. There was no discovery of the kind you mean. I always knew that he was ignoble. There was no love hurt to the death."
"You mean that you did not love him?" ”

“ Countess Adrian, of whom the world said—he was too chivalrous to finish the sentence, even in thought. She seemed to have read what was passing in his mind: a deep blush overspread her face.
"You judge me like the typical man of the world," she said, with a sadness which touched him infinitely; "and no man of the world can ever conceive it possible that a woman may be dragged in the mire and yet through all keep the heart of a girl. Well, no matter."
"Countess," said Lendon hastily, fearing he had wounded her, "I want to think of you only as you would have me think. You puzzle me ”

“ He is going to marry the daughter of one of your English peers. You see there are mothers even in your pious England who don't hesitate to give their young daughters to a man of known profligacy, and who has a wife already living. ”